THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE n’ ME

It doesn’t take much to turn the typical citizen into a low-level tyrant. I know from firsthand experience.

During my grad school years studying for a master’s degree in social work (yes, I’ve changed careers since then), I was assigned to a field placement (internship) to gain some initial experience in addition to my coursework. At the time, I wanted to focus on a more clinical concentration, so I could eventually help people with mental health counseling. Unfortunately, I was placed into some community youth center instead for my first year. You see, the social work world advertises itself as a data-based pseudo-psychological profession, but in practice tends to gravitate toward community organizing—Michael Moore and Greta Thunberg wannabes, that is.

As part of the field placement, a student is expected to meet with the director of the facility each week for supervision and submit a process recording (basically a journal entry) detailing any experiences from the field work. These are submitted to the advisor back at school and are a requirement for graduation. The reality is that, especially at a place as benign as a community center, there wasn’t much to write about. There was mostly paperwork and filing, or assisting a local soup kitchen in stocking shelves, but there was always pressure to include a dramatic and emotional story in each week’s process recording. How anyone can create a soap opera out of organizing a fundraiser for a bullshit after-school arts and crafts program is beyond me.

There were, however, a small handful of incidents that involved actual counseling. These children were often referred to the youth center by a teacher or administrator from their school in the district, and the parents were also sometimes called in to assist in resolving the issue.

One day, I sat in on an interview with a young African-American boy, about fourteen years old, who was experiencing feelings of depression. I was told beforehand that he was having problems finishing schoolwork, and that he felt he had no one to talk to. When he sat down on the couch in our conference room, he was friendly, but was also having a hard time divulging and articulating exactly why he was depressed. The boy did mention that he had a hard time talking about his depression with his mother, but didn’t go into too much detail. There were no bruises or black eyes, and it seemed the depression could have come from anywhere, whether from his experiences at school or in the home.

When his mother joined, the boy seemed a little apprehensive to tell her what was wrong, but she definitely seemed concerned and tried repeatedly to coax more information out of her son. We eventually ended the conversation without any solid resolution, but gave the lady and her boy business cards and a folder with additional resources just in case. If anything escalated, they had everything they needed to get immediate help in the community. I remember the social worker recommending that they contact the school psychologist or some other professional to ensure that the child would have an outlet to talk about the things that were bothering him.

About a week or so went by, and then I was asked by one of the social workers at this youth center to call up the mother. With an air of frustration in her voice, the employee said that she hadn’t heard back about any follow-up with a psychologist, and I needed to make sure that her son was getting any help he needed.

Despite the lack of information from the initial in-person meeting, everything in me said I needed to help this boy, as if he were the vessel through which I could help myself. Because I was young. I was useless. I had no value in the real world. And finally, here was my chance to make a difference. I could be like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, and help Cole in order to help Vincent.

Besides, according to my professors and the administrators at this government-run facility, it was my mission to do everything in my power to hear the unheard, to advocate for my clients. It was for this reason that I grew so irritated with the boy’s mother when she showed reluctance to seek professional therapy for her son. I’m ashamed to say, I ended up taking a scolding tone with this lady over the phone.

“Ma’am, if you care about your son, you will get in touch with one of the resources we’ve provided you with.”

She hung up.

Like many others have and still do on the left, I felt a disdain for what I perceived as this lady’s “anti-intellectualism” in dismissing the experts. I was convinced that she didn’t even love her son, and that she was more interested in her own biases than in his well-being. The truth was that this anger was coming from my own inexperience and insecurity. Maybe, if I had been a better listener, or shown more intellectual curiosity, I would have known a thing or two about why a parent would have such distrust in a random bureaucrat. In fact, how fucking dare I even interfere with the raising of someone else’s child! I was 24 years old. What the fuck did I know?

Thankfully, no one was ordered to collect this kid from the household, and no police were called, but they very well could have been under the circumstances. It often bothers me to this day to think of what I could have done to an innocent family going through a pretty typical situation.

Could there have been abuse going on in the home? Could there have been an entire underbelly of criminality that I could have exposed had I pushed further in this so-called case? Sure. But there was nothing that was outwardly suggesting any of that. And the older I get, the more I feel that it was absolutely none of my business. It especially wasn’t the government’s business.

Think of all the typical people in this country who are lonely, lacking in influence, stuck in a dead-end job. They’re going nowhere fast and have resigned themselves to a destiny of mediocrity. It takes one opportunity for any of these individuals to seize authority and to wield it over anyone lower in the hierarchy.

It is a mistake to think that power is exercised directly from the top. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden’s handlers, and Kamala Harris have never and will never single-handedly control the populace. Nor will Congress, cabinet members, or state governors in either party. Tyranny will always come from the very average people who eagerly go along with these directives. It comes from the NYPD officers who break up religious services and prevent funerals for loved ones, all in the name of “public health protocols.” It comes from government teachers who force eight-year-old children to wear a mask for an entire school day. It comes from unimpressive busybodies in your neighborhood who email a photo of you spreading disinformation to a “.org” site so it can be added to a public Google Sheet.

For those brief few minutes, and perhaps for the following day or two when these Karens receive likes on social media, they can feel like a hero. At the very least, they can envision their grandchildren hearing of this civic duty someday, not unlike an aging Freedom Rider. They can stand proudly, chest out, and say “I was there, and I did something that mattered.”

As Michael Malice has discussed at length, the Soviet era had no shortage of such people. While writing The White Pill, he was surprised to learn that many under this regime were willing to turn in their own friends and family, accusing them of collaboration against the State. Power, even when given to former victims or weaklings, has no limits. Anyone with the temerity to publish your vaccination status or contact your employer will have no problem alerting the Feds to your location should the scenario arise.

Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has spoken about a book called Ordinary Men, which tells of average German citizens who were told they could change their job assignment at any time, but still stayed in their military policeman role and ended up shooting pregnant Polish women dead during World War II.

I write all of this not to make your blood boil, or to sell you a survival pack of 200 MRE meals using a promo code. The fact is that it is important to know the fundamental psychology behind the powers that be in one’s society. Politicians and corporate executives alike are dependent on stealthily confusing people like you into both a false sense of security and fear whenever you think about them. Even the most skeptical will fall for it from time to time. But with the necessary background knowledge, ordinary citizens can begin to protect themselves against these tricks, and perhaps even use this manipulation against the manipulators. 

That is, stop pretending that elected officials deserve any more respect than the average citizen under their governance. They are fallible, flawed human beings who slack off on the job and deflect responsibility just as much as the busboy at your local dive bar (except, the busboy doesn’t waste $10 billion of taxpayer money to do it). 

Stop pretending that there is such a thing as “presidential” behavior. Bill Clinton got his dick sucked by an intern at the workplace, and then got into semantics on live television about the meaning of the word “is.” Before you start revering the idea of “public service,” try to imagine the type of person who would have the audacity to feel they can govern over and speak for you, let alone a constituency of thousands or millions.

And then, try to imagine all of the less impressive nobodies to which these leaders have delegated that power. Act accordingly.